I as photographer and committed to the commons as a key philosophy to make a better world when we need it most must state that the previous filtering of contents to be mandated to all platforms that either host or facilitate de availability of content goes directly against my interest and sure enough of many many others who rely on new technologies to create, share and access culture.

Such a request goes directly against our decision and will as creators and citizens and will bring an unnecessary burden only to protect those who are unable and unwilling to embrace the advantages of the digital environment. To have rules of artificial scarcity made for the 17th century will no longer work in the early XXI and beyond.

Also the link tax proposal, proven broken by empirical data shows that you have the urgent duty to pay attention to your data and not only to listen to some desperate copyright maximalist lobbies. The snippet link tax is basically something that affects our freedom of speech and the right to be correctly informed. Without having a simple straight way to refer to relevant contents to verify what’s being said, thus, without context to a matter, we are undoubtedly advocated to manipulation. And we know how this will unfold.

About the proposal to, again, force to licensing agreement for services that reproduce of refer to significant visual works, we are, with the same old broken reasoning and short sighting. Please understand that I, as photographer, consider this absolutely against my interest both as citizen needing to access to the view and search of images and as creator and facilitator of them. Moreover we need to expand the right to use and reuse copyrighted works for the purpose of fair use, education and informal education and other possible exceptions. Services that facilitate this are totally necessary and should be able to operate without the arbitrary will of collecting societies that only seldom act in favor or creators. Again, there are ways creators can enforce their rights when abuses occur, which is not the case in the services you will to hurt with this proposal.

In a world of fast interaction, where we face many struggles beyond our common understanding, to impose licensing schemes, therefore more litigation and, in general, undesired artificial scarcity is the sure receipt to disaster; will do nothing to prevent the fall of old schemed enterprises unwilling to work to adapt themselves, and will hurt beyond possible recovery those of us who do believe technology being used for the common good is our best tool now to save us from dangers near and far.

I urge you to consider the voices of the also creators like I that have started to engage the advantages of digital goods and way of creation where new business models and new services are key for the future of a better society.